Jessica Soffer's Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots is an exceptional novel, filled with well-wrought characters and sharp, beautiful prose. This profound story of two lonely people who find common ground in food, told in Soffer's singular voice, is unforgettable.

Library Journal wrote of the book:

"This powerful debut sheds light on the meaning and power of family, whether its members are blood-related or "created" by nonrelatives. Food is what strengthens relationships here, particularly the search for specific recipes. Young, troubled Lorca lives in New York City; her distracted mother, a chef, is rather uninterested in Lorca's psychological troubles; her estranged father lives in New Hampshire. Researching how to prepare an unusual meal, Lorca feels she can win her mother’s interest and love if she can prepare this delicacy. She meets Victoria, who once owned a restaurant specializing in Iraqi meals. Their cooking lessons lead to confided morsels of their own pasts. However, it is not just the love of food but understanding and acceptance that help to make this such a lovely novel."

I am obsessed with rhythm. I'm an awful poet, play no instruments, and wish I were a better singer, but I've always been taken with the music of things. Perhaps it has something to do with growing up in New York City, the relentless orchestra: radiators on the xylophone, garbage trucks idling on the bass, wrecking ball on the triangle, vacuum upstairs on first violin. You've got to find a way to harmonize with the noise, or implode. I suppose I've come to rely on it. In a perfect world, I'd be a Raelette and a flamenco dancer on weekends: rhythm in my bones, and for a living. But, the world is far from perfect. And here I am, at my desk, in my slippers, typing to the tune of a car alarm, trying to get it right. Right. Right. Right-uh.

It is probably unsurprising then that music has everything to do with writing for me. I listen while I write. I write while I listen. My first novel, Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots, was built to the rhythm, for the rhythm, because of the rhythm of a very wonderful set of songs.

There are those (1) that I listened to while actually writing—as I sat, hands on keys, ass in chair, earbuds ensconced and there are others (2) that I listened to extracurricular-ally, while living—hands off keys, hands on doorknobs, hands soapy and scrubbing a pan—that either informed a scene or character or mood or feels, in retrospect, like they should have.

(1)

"Big Red Machine" by Aaron Dessner & Justin Vernon

Plot does not come naturally to me. At a certain point in the process, I realized that music could help. When I listen to a tune that bristles with foreboding, that moves along at a steady clip, that builds and surges, the writing seems—on good days—to snap to, and follow suit. This song is just right for that: arresting but unaggressive, significant but not hyperbolic. It's gorgeous. And the final lines feel so appropriate for the characters in Apricots. "That's all I've learned: to suffer."

"Waltz for Debbie" by Bill Evans String Quartet

Because this song is charming but not sanguine, full of forward momentum but not cataclysmic, it was my go-to tune for writing the unassuming sections of Apricots. If this song were an activity, it would be walking around town, doing errands. It's awful to think of any section of the novel as merely functional, but. Noted. Won't happen again.

"Ivy" by Active Child

This song draws my focus along as if by the pull of a very sturdy thread. I'm wary of dissecting why too terribly much lest the magic wear off. And it is magic. At least until the phone rings. Or my stomach growls. Or it's too cold in here. Or shiny thing.

(2)

"Redford (For Yia-Yia & Papou)" by Sufjan Stevens

For me, this is a song about death, which is something that the characters of Apricots are constantly swerving around. It's poignant, compelling and completely devoid of fanfare. After one character's husband dies, she keeps wondering when the explosion will happen. Any kind. And it doesn't. The most shocking part about death for her (for everyone?) is that life doesn't skip a beat.

"Hope There's Someone" by Antony and The Johnsons

The two main narrators in Apricots need and want so much from each other. Antony's voice is suspended with that same kind of hope—and his lyrics reveal the stuff that's deeper: the desperation. This song might be overstating the point a bit, but there's nothing quite as heartbreaking as finding oneself and/or feeling utterly, devastatingly alone.

"Sweet Disposition" by The Temper Trap

Someone passed this along and I felt like I'd discovered the cure for melancholy. Turned out, everyone had been listening to this song until their ears bled, was still melancholy, and I'd just been living under a rock. Still, it feels like the essence of young love to me, at least from the perspective of Apricots' teenage narrator, Lorca. It's so eager, so wide-eyed that it belongs in a streetlight love scene, which is also, often, where teenagers feel they belong, too.

"Al Atlal" by Umm Kulthum

Umm Kulthum (a.k.a. Oum Kalthoum, Om Kalsoum) is an Arabic music legend and her songs would have been playing at The Shohet and His Wife, an Iraqi restaurant at the core of Apricots' storyline. This song makes me think of Iraqi women in lots of pattern and magenta silk, dancing and clucking and clapping as something orange and heavily spiced simmers in the kitchen.

"Just Breathe" by Pearl Jam

Longing, regret, death: all so much a part of Apricots. And for Lorca, a pain addict, Vedder's particular lyric—"There's so much in this world to make me bleed"—really says it better than I ever could, than I did. Too late. Fail again. Fail better.